Let's turn to God's Word. We'll read the scripture upon which that song was based, Isaiah 52, that third servant's song. We'll read Isaiah 52, 13 through 53, 12, an unfortunate chapter division placed here. And then we'll read from Luke 9. Let's listen now to the Word of God as an act of worship. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. Just as many were astonished at you, so his visage was marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men. So shall he sprinkle many nations, kings shall shut their mouths at him, for what had not been told them they shall see, and what they had not heard they shall consider. Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness, and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised, and we did not esteem him. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed Him stricken, spitten by God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and He was afflicted. he had opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as sheep before its shears is silent. So he opened not his mouth, he was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living, for the transgressions of my people he was stricken. And they made his grave with the wicked, but with the rich it is death, because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors. And He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Turn to the Gospel of Luke. Chapter 9, we'll read 18-27, but we'll be looking only at verse 23 tonight. Luke 9, 18-27, focusing upon verse 23. Here again the Word of God, and it happened as Jesus was alone praying that His disciples joined Him, and He asked them, saying, Who do the crowds say that I am? So they answered and said, John the Baptist, but some say Elijah, and others say that one of the old prophets is risen again. He said to them, But who do you say that I am? Peter answered and said, The Christ of God. And He strictly warned and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised the third day. He said to them all, If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and is himself destroyed or lost? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his own glory and in his father's and of the holy angels. But I tell you truly there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God. May God bless the reading of His Word. Amen. Please be seated. Let's pray. Our Lord, it has been our privilege on the Lord's Day, for most of the days, for many of us here, most of the days of our lives, to gather in the house of the Lord, to sit under Your Word. We pray, O Lord, especially for the youth here, that they would not despise this privilege, they would not begrudge it, but that they would recognize that week after week we are called to feast upon Your Word. And as we consider hard things, supernatural things, Lord, things that will call us to turn away from ourselves, even at great cost, we ask for help. We pray that we would receive these words and then use them to our own profit, to your glory. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, Banner of Truth, which is the best publisher in the world, without exception or rival, did something wise this past year when they reprinted Walt Chantry's little booklet called The Shadow of the Cross. And I would commend that book to all of you. And in that book, Chantry writes, bearing a cross is every Christian's daily conscious selection of those options which will please Christ, pain self, and aim at putting self to death. It is every Christian's daily conscious selection of those options which will please Christ, pain self, and aim at putting self to death. What I want to do tonight is meditate for some minutes on this central call of the Christian faith distilled for us and scripturated for us here in Luke 9 verse 23. And if any man, if anyone, would desire to come after Jesus Christ, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Him. To embrace the cross is not to go looking for suffering, but rather to be so committed to Jesus and His ways that suffering or the prospect of suffering is no deterrent to obedience. To follow Christ is to embrace the cross in holy and self-denying obedience. And so we can think about taking up a cross in a physical way. It was imaged for us in the very life of Jesus. But when we think of that action that Jesus did, where even there He had that cross laid upon Him, as we'll talk about later on, this was Jesus at the, we could use either end, at the highest point of His obedience, or the lowest point to which His obedience brought Him, whichever perspective you'd want to consider. And it's in that kind of pathway that every Christian is called to walk. To follow Jesus means to embrace His way, to embrace Him in holy, self-denying obedience. I often use this phrase, I think it's a good phrase, if you have any acquaintance with your own heart. If you have any familiarity with your own weaknesses and your own sins and propensities to any number of ungodly things, you will know that this call is profoundly unnatural for those who are wired now on this side of the fall to seek comfort and to seek to fit in and to seek pleasure. But while this call for us is not natural, we must understand it is absolutely necessary. And while it is not pleasant to bear a cross, we must remember and believe as a fundamental presupposition that to bear a cross for Christ's sake is good. For the cross bearing life is one lived in the assurance of God's kind intentions for His beloved children, And a cross-bearing life is one where the pleasures and comforts of the world are stripped away and the promises of God become more clear and more evident, more valued, and thus more prominent in our lives. What I want to do tonight as we consider how following Christ is to embrace the cross in holy, self-denying obedience is look at two very simple aspects of these words. The first will be a basic consideration of cross-bearing, so we're going to look at cross-bearing defined first of all, and then we're going to exegete these words under the heading of cross-bearing described. Cross-bearing defined first and then cross-bearing described as we open up these words how Jesus calls His apostles and all of His disciples to follow Him in this life. What does it mean to bear a cross? Well, first and foremost, fundamental to bearing the cross or the cross-bearing life is to deny self. To bear the cross is, by definition, to deny self. This has various aspects, and the first aspect that perhaps might be most evident to you is that to bear the cross is to deny self regarding sin. A cross-bearing Christian, one who is fixated upon and committed to the call of discipleship, will seek to deny self when it comes to sin. What that means is that by the Holy Spirit's power, we are called and thus we are required to mortify sinful desires, which is enshrined in our membership vows, our professions of faith. We are called to avoid sinful deeds, and we are called, as our confession actually distills for us, to wage an irreconcilable war in our lives against the remnants of corruption that live within us, remnants of the old man. We must remember that as we're called to put away sinful deeds, put away sinful desires, wage an irreconcilable war, that we do so with this hope that the Christian must and will win, the Christian must and will win by God's grace. And so to deny self is not a life of self-loathing misery, but it is a life of self-mortifying joy. As we find that joy in the Lord, we must mortify sin as we deny ourselves. But there's another aspect of self-denial, and that is the denial of self regarding the things that are apparently neutral. I want to explain this a little bit, and I think the best way to do so is to look at the life of Jesus Himself. Self-denial sometimes requires us to deny ourselves things that may be apparently neutral or are in and of themselves good. Think about the life of Jesus. The Scriptures are full of descriptions of His life. He who was rich, for our sake, became poor. Was it wrong that Jesus was rich? Was it wrong that He possessed everything? No. He, by divine right, possessed everything. And yet, He gave it up. He who was the lawgiver became the curse endurer. Was it wrong for Jesus to be the lawgiver in Zion? No, it was His position in office by divine right. And yet, He willingly subjected Himself to the curse of that law as if He were Himself a lawbreaker. Does it not strike you as In words fail me, amazing that he who is the bread of life would be emaciated after 40 days of fasting in a wilderness. Why? Because he lived a life of the denial of self that he might redeem us out from under the curse of the law which we rightfully deserved. It should astonish you that the Lord of life willingly endured death. that those who were the cause of death might in due time taste life. You see, Jesus, while He didn't live a life of denying sinful deeds and desires, He did live a life where He did not consider His divine glory as something to be used for His own advantage. But as the Word of God tells us, He made Himself of no reputation, taking the form, that is, the actual position and identity of a bond slave. coming in the likeness of men. We must remember that as we deny ourselves, self-denial is not needless asceticism, but rather it is a more positive, heartfelt devotion. To bear the cross to deny self is to confess that Jesus is Lord and you are not. That Jesus is Lord and you are not. And isn't this the great war? Isn't this the key? You think about your own life, your own tendency to laziness. What is laziness? Laziness is not doing nothing. Laziness is an unwillingness to do what is necessary. We need to put that to death. We need to say, Jesus is Lord and He calls me to be diligent. When we think about our sinful outbursts of wrath, these violent outbursts of dissatisfaction at what is going on around us. We are saying, Jesus is not Lord, I deserve to be treated better. When we give way to gossip, we are saying, no, Jesus is not Lord, I should be able to say what I want for whatever reason I want. These are things Jesus calls us to mortify. When you're tempted and you give in to lust and sexual immorality, Jesus, we are confessing that He is not Lord, that what I have at my disposal is not all that I need. We must repent of these things, deny ourselves, this is the cross bearing life. There's a second aspect, though, to cross-bearing. It's not merely to deny self, and I hinted at it just a moment ago, because it's not just a negative aspect of the Christian life, but a positive embracing of Jesus himself. And so, to bear the cross is, yes, on the one hand, to deny self, but it is, secondly, to embrace Jesus himself. Octavius Winslow writes this, a wholly self-denying, cross-bearing life is not the drudgery of a slave. but the filial, loving obedience of a child. It springs from love to the person, gratitude for the work of Jesus, and is the blessed effect of the spirit of adoption in the heart. To deny the cross, yes, is to deny, I'm sorry, to embrace the cross, yes, is to deny those things that are wrong, is to forego sometimes those things for greater ends, but it is ultimately to embrace Jesus as we set out on a life in which and through which God is conforming us to Christ's own glorious image. And so to embrace Jesus is to receive Him and all that comes with Him. Yes, His benefits. Yes, the forgiveness of sins. Yes, the promise of glory. Yes, a clear conscience by the resurrection of Christ. But it is also to embrace Him and to receive Him in His suffering, to bear His reproach, to be willing to be mocked and even put to death for the love of Christ. to endure with Him and for Him that we might stand with Him in glory. Very succinctly stated, dear congregation, to bear the cross means to follow the Lord regardless of temporary consequences. And we must be very clear about this. I should say that's a very brief definition, perhaps too long to follow everything, of bearing the cross, but let's get into the text a little bit more. Verse 23, where Jesus says, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. I want to give you seven aspects of Jesus' words here, seven different elements as we walk carefully through these words. We begin with Jesus' call where He says, if anyone desires. The first thing I want you to see about cross bearing is that it is a universal necessity. It is a universal necessity. No Christian is accepted. A cross bearing life is not just for ministers of the gospel. It's not just for elders or deacons. It's not just for missionaries to go to the uttermost parts of the earth. It is for anyone. It is for everyone. It is for the young. It is for the old. It is for the male. It is for the female. If all must be saved by His blood, all are therefore called to walk in these ways. Do not think there is such a thing as the Christian life without the cross. It doesn't exist. It's not the Christian life. It is first a universal necessity. Secondly, I want you to see that the life of bearing the cross, it's not merely a universal necessity, but it is an act of the renewed will. He says here, if anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. Some of the English translations say, if anyone will come after Me or wills to come after Me. Sometimes in our English we can get lost a little bit and think, well, this is talking about the prospect, maybe the future aspect of if we think in the future of following Jesus, be prepared for this. That's not what Jesus is saying. It is that if you have, by the work of God's Spirit, consciously, graciously, devotedly made the commitment and decision to follow after Jesus Christ, you must understand what that entails. These words are directed to the decision-maker. And no, I didn't become an Arminian last week. But this is the language for the will. This is the decision-making faculty. If you make this commitment, recognize that you must commit to Christ and His cross. Why would anyone do this? We'll talk more about this in the weeks to come, of the life that Jesus promises for those, and you should see in the flow of the narrative here that right after these difficult, hard words, we are then given the glorious picture of Jesus' transfiguration as a great help to us in that call. But why would anyone Desire to follow a Savior who says, follow me and you'll die. Follow me and you must deny yourself. Follow me and you must put upon your shoulders the very sign of Roman torture and crucifixion. This is the product of the Spirit's sovereign and gracious work. If you know the Shorter Catechism and you need to memorize those things, they're very helpful. but effectual calling, that work of God's Spirit. What does He do? What does the Spirit do to someone? He convinces us of our sin and misery. He enlightens our minds in the knowledge of Christ. And then what does He do? He graciously and sovereignly renews our wills. Why? So that we might embrace Jesus Christ and His cross, as Jesus has offered to us in the Gospel. This is, just as the call to follow Jesus and bear the cross is completely and profoundly unnatural, the way of getting to that decision, the way of getting to that commitment and getting to that life is profoundly supernatural. He shows us the bankruptcy and the misery of self and world, and then sets before our minds the glory of Jesus Christ so that we might be like John Bunyan's Christian, running out of the city of destruction, setting out upon the path, putting our finger in our ears and saying, life, life, eternal life, whatever cross we may end up bearing. And yes, it is far easier to say that than to do it. I want to warn you, however, that the sovereign operation of the Spirit to get us to this point does not remove the solemn obligation of the sinner to follow after Christ. You must do it. Which is why we must be born again, we must heed the call, we must repent of our sins, we must take up the cross as an act of the renewed will. The cross bearing life is a universal necessity, no one excepted. It is an act of the renewed will. And thirdly, it is a basic of discipleship. It is a ground floor doctrine in the Christian life. It is not at the highest echelons of sublime theology, although it entails the most profound truths. He says here, if anyone desires to come after me, if you want to follow me, if you want to set out on this great track of walking in my steps and of living by my words, you must understand this is a basic requirement. This is where the perversion of that thing falsely called the prosperity gospel, because it's not a prosperity and it's not gospel in any sense of the word, but this is where that perversion makes such a mockery of the Christian life. This is where the temptation is in Christian evangelism to kind of put the cross in the shadows rather than the sinner in the shadow of the cross. We cannot go about the Christian life, speak about the Christian life in some sort of bait and switch. Jesus will solve your problems. When sometimes Jesus wrecks, actually all the time Jesus will wreck your life. And He brings you to confront your own sin, your own guilt, your own weakness, your own fears, your own carelessness. It's a hard thing, but it's a glorious thing. It is a basic principle of Christian discipleship. Jesus sets this at the entry point of all Christian faithfulness. It is required. As Paul says in Galatians 5, those who are Christ's have, and we can insert, and must crucify the flesh with its passions and desires. It is a universal necessity, an act of the renewed will, a basic of discipleship. Fourthly, it is the willing sacrifice of self. If you look at the English here, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself. Let him deny himself. Now, the English struggles to communicate what the original here has. It's because English doesn't really have the capacity to communicate a third-person imperative. And that is a commandment that's not issued to, you go do this. That's what we think of as commandments. But when we talk about, he must go do this, usually English formations are, let him do this. And we think about, let them eat cake or something like that. But you have to understand that the forcefulness here is intense. This is not saying, let him do this if it so inclines his desires, or let him do this if you get around to it. No, it is, you must do this. But you must, as a willing sacrifice of self, you must deny yourself, you must take up the cross. Once again, consider this as epitomized in the life of Jesus Himself. And while we are in the Gospel of Luke, let me give you four instances from the Gospel of John where Jesus shows us graphically, stunningly, how willingly He did this, willingly offering up Himself. We learn in John 10 as he teaches about his own glory and about his own work, he says, I lay my life down. No one takes it from me. Nobody yanked the life of Jesus away from him as if you were a helpless victim. No, he was a willing sacrifice. He says, I lay it down that I might take it back up again. He gave his life up willingly. We see this again later in John 17 in the garden where Jesus is praying and we have the parallel accounts where Jesus says, not my will, but your will, thy will be done. We see it amazingly, one of my favorite texts in all the Bible, in John 18, when the band of thugs and robbers are all around him. And he asks, whom do you seek? And they say, Jesus of Nazareth. And all the English Bibles mess this up. He doesn't say, I am. He says, I am. This great statement of his own deity. And you remember what happens, children? You remember what happens to Jesus in that moment where, humanly speaking, he is entirely and most vulnerable before a mob? The soldiers fall back. Overpowered by His words, Jesus willingly gave up His life. And in the very next chapter, in John 19, as He stands before Pilate, and Pilate says, don't you know, Jesus, I have the power to deliver you, I have the power to give you over to death? And Jesus says, you would have no power unless it were given you from above. When Jesus said, into your hands I commit my spirit, Jesus was not swallowed up by death passively, but He willingly entered into death actively as a sacrifice. And this is our paradigm. This is not only, this is our hope, but it is also our paradigm. The cross bearing life is one of willingly giving ourselves over. A fifth aspect of the cross bearing life is that it is a lifelong obligation. You do not graduate from the school of the cross until your body lies dead in your grave. It is a lifelong obligation because Jesus says, let him take up his cross daily. Daily. Every single day. No Sabbath days from cross bearing. No vacation days from cross bearing. No paid time off or unpaid medical leave for cross bearing. It's daily. Daily we are called if we face the loss of possessions and opportunities for the sake of Christ, willingly to endure them. If we face reproach, whether in our relationships or for our reputation, for Christ's sake, we endure that. Daily we are called to mortify our sins and our desires, for Christ calls us to this end. Chantry says very succinctly, he says, there is but one depository of the cross. Children, do you know what a depository is? It's where you throw something out in the trash. He says there's only one depository of the cross, and that is the cemetery. You stop bearing the cross when you stop living. And therefore, the cross bearing life is one of regularity and intentionality. It doesn't just happen. We must, by God's grace, choose to make that happen. The sixth aspect of the cross-bearing life is that the cross-bearing life is most fundamentally, as we've already touched upon, a commitment to obedience. It's a commitment to obedience. He says, He must take up His cross and follow after me. It's to follow after Jesus Christ. It's the heart of bearing a cross. Now, we need to make a little distinction here from common Christian parlance or common Christian vocabulary. Often we say, well, that's her cross to bear. That's His cross to bear. And most of the time, it's a well-intended statement, but we're speaking about a difficult providence. That is true, and sometimes we have those burdens laid upon us. But the emphasis here is upon the active engaging in obedience, the active following after Christ on that blood-stained pathway with the weight of the cross bearing down upon our souls. While we are called passively to endure hard providences, the emphasis here is upon the conscious act of devotion as we follow Christ, and deny ourselves. How do we do this? What are some realms in life where we must learn to deny ourselves? Perhaps the greatest and most frequent area in our lives where we need to learn self-denial is in the discipline of prayer. You will find no place more readily available for you to acquaint yourself with your lack of self-denial than in the prayer closet, or on the prayer sidewalk, or in the prayer wherever you do that. You will find as you put away human artifice and human means, you will find as you seek God's face, and I know all of you have experienced this, how quickly your mind runs to and fro and hither and thither and yon. You will find how quickly you flag in your prayers, you fade in your prayers, you grow weary in prayers. We must learn to pray. denying ourselves. Another way that we deny ourselves is to cultivate and to pursue heavenly mindedness. To learn to set our minds upon things in heaven, not on things on earth. To think God's thoughts after Him and not man's thoughts according to the course of this world. We need to learn self-denial in the habit and in the act of worship as we give for the kingdom, give of those things God has given to us with a cheerful heart, by way of resources, of course, but also giving of ourselves our time, giving of our efforts. orienting our lives around the call of Christ to serve Him, to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. Remember, it was Ananias and Sapphira who kept something back that was theirs in the first place, but they kept it back. They lied and God killed them. We ought to offer ourselves fully, willingly, self-sacrificially. Some are called to sacrifice, to deny self by going places for the kingdom. going to an offended brother or sister, going, perhaps if you're called, to another place, a difficult place, an uncomfortable place, for the sake of Christ's Kingdom. We are so attuned to comfort and to the regular course that we think is the American dream that it can be startling to us that we might leave places of comfort and leave places of prosperity, leave places of liberty, and go for the Kingdom's sake. But this is the call for Christians. This life is short. We need to learn to deny ourselves. Children, you need to learn to deny yourselves as we seek to keep the Lord's day holy. Well, this is something that's so important. You need to remember that God's commandments, all ten of them, do call us to measures of self-denial. The fourth commandment is not excluded from that call. Does that mean you might have to give up? Certain athletic progress, does that mean you grown-ups have to give up certain promotions or certain reputations? Sometimes the answer is absolutely yes. Children, it means you need to put away childishness as you grow up, recognizing that it's time to follow Jesus Christ. Your time is His, your breaths are His, your lives are His. We need to deny ourselves for witnessing for Christ. putting away our fear of man, putting away our stupor, our cowardliness, opening our mouths for His sake. Fundamental to the cross-bearing life is a commitment to obedience. Finally, finally and most, I think most fundamentally, that a cross-bearing life is a Christ-focused burden. a Christ-focused burden, and it's really the last word here in the English, me. Jesus says, you deny yourself, take up your cross daily, you follow me. You see, The prospect of suffering, the prospect of self-denial, the prospect of hardship, when we fixate our minds upon those things, it can be very difficult to consider. But Jesus says, as you do all of these things, you're not focusing upon those things, you focus upon Me. You look to Me. You look to Me in devotion. You look to Me in love. You remember His life, His sufferings, His sighs, His tears, His death. Remember, God's purpose for Christ and that God's purpose for the crosses in our lives are oriented to that end. If you want to become acquainted with someone who knew how to wrestle with the reality and the theology of the cross, do yourself and your soul and your family a favor and go read Samuel Rutherford's letters. And you will find Him constantly wrestling with and thinking through and articulating this reality. One thing He said is this, I find crosses, Christ's carved work that He makes out for us. And that with crosses He figures and portrays us to His own image, cutting away pieces of our ill and our corruption. And then He prays, Lord, cut. Lord, carve. Lord, wound. Lord, do anything that may perfect Thy Father's image in us and make us meet for glory." That is, make us prepared for glory. The way you endure the cross-bearing life, or I should say probably the way you endure in the cross-bearing life of the Christian, which is a universal necessity. I won't repeat all the seven points. But the way you do it is by looking into Jesus. We need to remember and we need to seek God to give us grace to view taking up the cross not as a fearful thing, not as an infrequent thing, though we may tremble and though we will fail, but that to take up the cross is an honorable thing. It is a Christ-centered thing. It is a Christ-like thing. Because it was Jesus Christ who, the Word of God tells us, despised the shame, and He endured the cross. How and why? Do you remember? He did it for the joy that was set before Him. And as they look to those things, and as we look to Him, we endure the cross, despise the shame, remembering that Jesus is now seated with the Father in glory, having made propitiation for our sins. That's the goal. That's the call. Take up your cross. Follow Him. Amen. Our Father in heaven, these are hard words for us. These are hard truths. We cannot do them. And so we pray that as we just heard from Rutherford, that you would carve and that you would cut, that you would wound and that you would do those things. And Lord, we tremble even to ask you for these things. But Lord, we pray in faith, remembering that You have promised through these things to make us meet, prepared for glory. Our Lord, teach us to trust You. Teach us to follow You. Teach us to put work to these words, that we will be a holy people, a self-denying people, and a Christ-centered people. And we might be a Christ-honoring people. We pray in His name. Amen.